Global and Cultural Competencies - Task 2 - 1st part

The Global and Culture Competencies asked to give a short answers (Around 250-500 words) on these questions:
How I will prepare myself for a group of students from different cultures? (Finnish language teacher)
What I will do to help the student that speaks only arabic to learn Finnish?

To have a multiculture classes is a challenge but it´s not impossible to deal with students from different cultures. I would at the beginning find out their personal information (for instance where are they from, what schools they attended and so on) and then organize a previous meeting with them and/or with their families.
If it is absolutely necessary I would ask the help of a translator, but at the beginning I would probabily find out their knowledge in Finnish language.
In order to do that I think would be enough have an informal conversation. After that I could divide them in 3 different levels:
- beginners
- intermidiate
- advanced.
With the beginners I would start working on pronunciation: using a lot my body language and try to do as much as I can to involve them. One good activity might be in group to write (and it doesn´t matter if it´s not written correctly) a list of Finnish words (including names of famous Finns, food, cities and so on..) I would then with them start to work on the pronunciation of those words. If necessary I could use as a language  support English/French and Italian ;)
Probabily in this group will be also that student that knows only arabic: she will be treated as the rest and if necessary I could ask help for a translator. Putting her with beginners won´t let her/his motivation going down if she/he will be if would be with advanced or intermidiate.
With the intermidiate: I would start with a simple conversation on daily routines in order to check what are their speaking skills. I would ask them also to write down a small presentation on themselves (in order to see their written skill). Based on this I could carry on a tailor made course for them too.
With the advanced: Conversations, discussions on newspapers articles, about cultures. Movies. Comments on national happenings. Same strategy than intermidiate course: build a tailored course for them.


In all of three I would teach them the Finnish culture: showing them videos (according to their level), receipts (according to their level) and everything what included the Finnish daily culture routines.
I would also recommend to have a book, an exercise book and cd that they could listening at the different dialogue and pronunciation during their spare time.
For teaching culture I would also spend some time during my lessons to let the students express themselves and talk about their own culture. I would work (beside the language itself) on the concepts of:
- communication between different culture
-  expectations on the other culture actions
 - building a group and a community
- the advantages of no violence approach but see the idea of conflict as a constructive opportunity to have a dialogue
- culture shock

I would use for cover this part the material used by the National Agencies from different training programmes. One of it you can find in here: salto-youth.net